Blog #10: Morocco enacts migration reform

Morocco enacts migration reform

The Moroccan government has announced their plans for regulating up to 40 000 illegal immigrants as part of their new Moroccan Migration policy which was introduced in September. It has been stated that 850 immigrants who are considered asylum-seekers will receive the benefits of a legal resident automatically. There are sex more categories for foreign nationals that are covered under the regularization operation, Morocco intends to run this between the 1^st and the 31^st of December of 2014.

There are categories for those who are spouses of Moroccan citizens must still be able to prove that they have at least lived in the nation for roughly 2 years and there is the chance for foreign couples who have resided in morocco for at least 4 years will benefit. Obviously children of both categories will also receive the benefits as well. Along with people who have valid working permits of at the lowest 2 years duration. Along with the workers there is the ill that have become seriously ill whilst being in Morocco will also receive the benefits.

A way for them to value and regulate each case is that they have set up a bureau for each prefecture, along with a national appeal committee will be set up as well.

Morocco is in the situation where they have made it very clear that they want to deal with this immigration issue, where they have 25000 to 40000 immigrants from sub-Saharan countries along with other countries around the world. For this new plan to take place, there has to be the infrastructure and systems in place to regulate these amounts of people. Obviously the immigrants are really happy with the news that has come from this article, this gives people the opportunity to live in the country they want to if their case goes through. It gives people like the example used in the article of Franck a 28 year old Ivorian national who has resided in Morocco for the best of 5 years. He has always aspired for a legal status and has been working as a builder all this time even with a law degree.

This new policy should bring out all of the fear from the illegal immigrants where they can finally get the chance to be legally residing citizens. It can be assumed that this will help there economy as a greater population can lead to greater economic growth, does this mean that Morocco can handle this? Well the government seems very confident that they can handle these immigrants, time will tell.

http://magharebia.com/en_GB/articles/awi/features/2013/11/14/feature-02

James Dougherty

11/14/13

6:02pm

Blog #9: Migrants to add 5.8m to bulging Britain

Migrants add 5.8 million to bulging Britain

Immigration is looking like the main force behind Britain’s booming population with a number set at 10 million rise within the next 25 years which in itself would make a city equivalent to London. The Office of national statistics has released that the population is set to rise by 9.6 million by 2037 which would raise the population to 73.3 million people. A 60% increase which is equivalent to 5.8 million people is linked to immigration either from new arrivals or people having children when they arrive or settle in Britain.

The British Prime Minister will come under great scrutiny after the pledge he made which was to reduce net immigration to “tens of thousands”. Now they are expecting 165000 migrants per year, each year until 2037.

This new data has come from growing concerns over the new wave of Bulgarian and Romanian set to enter when the current restrictions are lifted. This new wave will bring in 50000 people a year moving into the country. This leaves Britain with a massive issue; they are experiencing and set to experience unsustainable influx of migration for their current carrying capacity.

Sir Andrew Green, who is the chairman of Migration watch UK, has said “the figures underlined the need to have a net migration target and stick to it”... he then goes onto say “These latest projections confirm that we are still on course for a substantial increase in population”.

The ONS (Office of National Statistics) have also predicted an additional 4.2 million immigrants to come post 2037. The children of the immigrants would count for 1.6 million of the rise in population. These statistics show that 1 in 5 of the pupils in primary education are speaking another language at home.

This growing number of the population also addresses the other issue of lack of schools to hold all these new people, they just don’t have the infrastructure to hold this many.

This social problems related to this issue for Britain can be related to the educational sector, the education needs to improve so that skilled British people can enter and compete with the immigrants for the work. Currently it is just an open field for immigrants and until the skilled British people improve, the population will continue to grow in terms of net immigration. It has been found by the government that one fifth of jobs in the key industries are taken up by immigrants all because they are ready and skilled to work over the British.

James Dougherty

4:09pm

11/8/13

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10429901/Migrants-add-5.8m-to-bulging-Britain.html

Blog #8: British PM: Blame Education not migration

David Cameron: blame education not migration for factories foreign labour

The British Prime Minister David Cameron recent took a mini visit to a factory in Oxford, due to the growing concerns over the number foreign workers in factories doing the jobs that the British aren’t doing. He states that the Eastern European migrants should not be blamed for the increase in foreign workers. The education system should be creating a better learning environment and system that works in order to provide the work industry with local workers who are skilled to do the required jobs at hand.

Currently half the workers are from Poland, Lithuania, or Latvia and it is pretty simple, they want to work, there were/are jobs, they are skilled and qualified, they come in and they are doing the job. From this mini visit to an Oxford factory, he said that Britain should respond by improving the education system so that "we are producing young people out of our schools and colleges who are fully capable of doing those jobs”. He goes on to defend the foreign workers as they are not to be blamed for someone going into any factory and seeing half of them from Europe or other regions of mass migration. If people are skilled then they should be allowed to do the job that is available, local preference should not be favoured in this case as it would decrease productivity and efficiency as less skilled workers would be doing the job.

He does defend the foreigners working in the factories, but he also does not want to see all Britain’s jobs lost to foreign work. This would entail a tough stance on education which would educate and skill the younger generation so that they can work after school or college. This skill base they would get would allow greater competition for work and may discourage foreign workers to come over which would increase local workers.

He came up with a solution by tackling education, welfare reform, and immigration all at once. By doing this it will help the recovery process and get the jobs back to more British people. The problem with this reform is that you will leave the current people behind, you may see economic growth for the people of Britain but that is the risk that may have to be taken, but it is not something that David Cameron and his government want to do.

James Dougherty

7:01pm

10/28/13

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-education-migration-factories

Blog #7: Nations looks at EU to Curb illegal migration

Nations look at EU to curb illegal migration

Among nine other nations, Greece leads the task force in curbing illegal immigration into their respective countries by appealing to the EU leaders in the coming Summit in Brussels this week.  These European countries have dealt with the grunt of illegal immigration due to their location. They are seeking the EU to play a more active role in tackling the amount of illegal immigrants arriving at these European nations.

The core of this proposal is held by Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary. This proposal is expected to be accepted by the EU’s leaders as they will become more active in order to help these nations.

This group has heralded a new task force which has innovated the way in which initiatives get their problem across in the most effective and political way possible. This group is pressing the claim that the EU should be more cooperative on border control and monitoring with the agency known as “Frontex” which would help the countries struggling with the influx of immigration going on.

This influx into Greece by illegal immigrants via its land borders has seen a decrease dramatically in the recent year or two due to Frontex and its work at monitoring the borders to keep the key points of entry occupied and controlled. This does not mean that immigrants still aren’t arriving, they constantly arrive via the Aegean, the new migration reception centre has brought some order and control to the Aegean Island which is really struggling at the present time in handling the numbers.

This current issue of migration/immigration has shown how the modern day world should politically work together to control the flow of illegal immigration. This group of nations have led the way so that in future cases other counties may handle this issue in a similar way.

http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/nations-look-to-eu-to-curb-illegal-migration

James Dougherty

6:22pm

10/24/13

Blog 6: Serbia-Continues fight against illegal migration

Serbia “continues fight against illegal migration”

In a recent Ministerial conference on illegal migration held in Bucharest, Romania. The issue raised for Serbia was that they have seen a good solid increase in illegal migration since the year 2009. Serbia’s prime minister and interior minister have stated that these illegal migrants are predominantly from African or Asian countries.  More specifically the territory in Serbia has seen the Pakistani, Afghanistan, Syrian; Algerian and Somalian people use Serbia on route to more developed countries in Europe in an illegal and not certified way.

Serbia is doing a lot to stop this trend, in the early months of this year, they stopped 7228 attempts at getting past there border illegally which is a fall of %31 from that point the year before where the number of attempts stopped was at 8792. Serbia have found the most used border which is the one they share with Macedonia where the area is known as the Green line.

2011 the Serbian authorities foiled 10383, when then rose to a height of 13897 in 2012.

A Serbian politician named Ivica Dacic has said that it is vital that there is international cooperation with this issue which is aimed at the countries allowing them to pass through along with the countries in which they wish to arrive at. He was very stern when pointing out that illegal migration; human smuggling should not be separated with human trafficking as this would help stop the recent trend. The Serbian government have stated that one of their main focuses is to stamp down on the prevention of human trafficking as they wish to stop these illegal transfers.

This social issue raised in this article has seen the issues once again that international cooperation is always needed but not always received. The Serbian government is asking for help by countries involved but whether or not they get that cooperation is another issue. The trafficking of humans should not be separated from illegal migration and human smuggling as they fall under the same category, you may as well shine the light on all these issues instead of focusing on just the two when they are all necessarily the same thing. 

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2013&mm=10&dd=18&nav_id=88042

James Dougherty

10/18/13

9:09pm

Blog 5: Qatar- 'Systemic change' needed to protect migrants

Qatar- 'Systemic change' needed to protect migrants

With Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, there country has come under the incredible spotlight that comes with the honour of hosting the world cup. With this honour comes the test of your nation, and Qatar have been found in a recent investigation by the British Daily. That the foreign migrant labourers have been mistreated in their efforts on the construction sites associated with the 2022 World Cup.

Nandita Baruah, an expert analyst on labour migration at the Asia Foundation states when asked that there is much improvement needed to help the working conditions of these workers. Recently this investigation by the Daily has found that Dozens of migrant workers have died in the past couple months whilst working on the World Cup construction sites. According to Baruah there needs to be huge structural and systemic changes by the Qatari government in order to protect these workers and to improve their living, working conditions.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has found that 1.2 million labourers in the Emirates of Qatar are and have been facing abuse and exploitation. Nepal and Bangladeshi migrant workers have found mistreatment in the middle-eastern countries.

One of the other interesting stories out of this is that many countries on the Gulf have the same issue in terms of migrant workers being treated unfairly, but the World Cup has put the spotlight on the issue for Qatar which is a good thing to help these people.

One of the challenges with this issue is that there contract issues, average to no medical care, payment issues, long working hours and terrible working conditions on top of physical and mental abuse by the contractors. Compounding these problems, migrants returned home prior to their contract date due to poor health, and were never able to pay off the loan, a vast majority of workers left with a greater debt than they came with on top of poor health.

The greater the exposure for this issue, the greater the nation will feel the need to improve the standards for these workers. The countries involved need to stand up and say something in order for our human morality to be kept if we are to compete in those stadiums built under these conditions. 

James Dougherty

9:12pm

10/10/13

http://www.dw.de/qatar-systemic-change-needed-to-protect-migrants/a-17150288

Blog 4: Italy Boat Wreck

Italy Boat Wreck: Hundreds of Migrants feared dead after ship sinks off Lampedusa

In a recent attempt by African migrants to cross the Mediterranean in order to start a new life in Italy and Europe as a whole, they have found themselves part of a massive tragedy off the shores of the Lampedusa Island in Italy. They paid the ultimate price almost 300 men, women, and children are feared to have drowned out of 500 aboard the 20 metre vessel. The boat itself was in sight of the shore but it had caught fire and sunk before they could reach their destination. Witnesses of the tragic events could only describe the Mediterranean sea “was like a morgue”.

The migrants were believed to be from Eritrea, and Somalia where the boat left from Libyan shores. In the past decade thousands of migrants have died in the same way but this is the worst specific incident over the last 10 or so years.

The tragic story begun when the boats motor died on them, which then led to the boat taking on water. The passengers had no means of technology to call for help so they started a fire for signal, but the fuel, mixed with water led the boat to light up. The 500 passengers crammed to one side of the boat which left everyone to be flung or forced into the sea. It is expected 3 out of 100 women were rescued and no children were saved.

Simona Marcelli who is a legal expert for International Migration in Rome stated “Most of the migrants can’t swim. Only the strongest survived.”

A young Tunisian man has been detained after the events of this wreck, he is believed to be of the crew and also a trafficker, he faces charges of many counts of murder. The Mediterranean is very calm at this time of the year which means a lot of boats from Africa and the Middle East are carrying migrants to Europe, many of which are not sea worthy. These are desperate people trying to start a new life and the traffickers are the people who will risk everything and take their money.

European Commission has called for Europe to step up its efforts in preventing these horrors from occurring. The Commissioner said “we also need to intensify our efforts to fight criminal networks exploiting human despair”

In response to this, Italian Foreign minister said “there is no miraculous solution to the migrant exodus issue. If there were, we would have found it and put it into action”

People from Africa are always going to be searching for a new life in Europe, and there is always going to be a criminal network of traffickers willing to risk these tragedies and take them. There needs to be stricter coastal regulations in order to stop the boats or allow assistance to shore otherwise there will be a lot more of these types of tragedies in the future. 

James Dougherty

10/3/13

8:28pm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italy-boat-wreck-hundreds-of-migrants-feared-dead-after-ship-sinks-off-lampedusa-8855735.html